The present invention generally relates to web page design and more specifically to methods and apparatus for generating a page to publish data using a declarative specification.
A portal is designed to publish information for access by users. In order to publish the information, a web-based page is typically created. A page designer first determines how the web-based page should look. For example, the page designer may determine which data to display and how it should be displayed on the page. The page designer's preferences for the page are then communicated to a page developer, who then creates software code that generates a page to publish the data according to the page designer's preferences.
A page designer is typically a non-technical person who does not know how to write software code that will generate the web page. Rather, the page designer has to rely on a page developer to write the software code to generate the page. The page designer has to design the page and communicate with the page developer, who then develops the page and write the software code to generate the page according to the page designer's preferences. Development thus becomes a bottleneck for the page designer.
The page developer may attempt to pre-build pages for the portal in order to alleviate the bottleneck. The pre-built pages allow a page designer to lay out the data on the page without writing software code. However, the pre-built pages are created to display a certain subset of data. If the page designer wants to publish data other than the supported data for the pre-built pages, then a page developer has to create another page. Accordingly, the pre-built pages are not flexible on which data may be displayed in the page.